Shock Factory will be presented during the 2025 edition of the Wrocław Industrial Festival, with the members of Test Dept. This event will be an opportunity to explore Test Dept. historical works, featured in the book, as well as the artists’ more recent productions. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience.
Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music
Description:
Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s, and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon, it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage, mail art, installation, film, performance, sound, video) and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing, pervasive influence of technology.
Originally British, the movement soon outgrew Europe, extending into the United States and Japan during the 1980s. The sound experiments conducted by industrial bands – designing synthesizers, manipulating and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes, either recycled or laid down by the artists – were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions, deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the 20th century. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images, manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art), that investigated polemical themes: mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry and totalitarianism, among others.
This book introduces the visual and aesthetic elements of 1970s and 1980s industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement, who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and their collective coercive power.
Author Bio:
Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and attaché de conservation in the New Media Department of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. He is the author of books and articles exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices. In 2023, he curated the exhibition “Who You Staring At?” Visual Culture of the No Wave Scene in the 1970s and 1980s at the Centre Pompidou. He is currently leading a research project for the Centre Pompidou on pro-sex perspectives in art, from the 1960s to the present.
Endorsements:
“Nicolas Ballet’s in-depth analysis and comprehensive research provides a valuable insight into the objectives, attitudes and motives behind the imagery used by exponents of the many forms of industrial music.” – Cosey Fanni Tutti
“Most publications concerning industrial music dealt with the old cliché of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. For sure there was sex and drugs but rock ’n’ roll was the enemy. So I’m very happy with this very deep dive into the iconography of industrial music. It will give you a much better understanding of what it was/is all about.” – F.M. Einheit
“If future generations really want to know how it happened, they will now be able to explore the dopamine darkness of this extraordinary history.” – Graeme Revell
“This book is a thoroughly researched catalogue of ideas, suggestions, gestures, all intended to push existential issues to the front of your mind. To act on them, to truly explore your own. Z’EV sums it up: ‘it’s about being.’” – John Duncan
